Chapter 01 – AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013 Essentials – The Essentials and Beyond

hello my name is Eric Chappell author of
autocad civil3d 2013 essentials and this
is the essentials in beyond for chapter
1 for item number 1 of this exercise
where to look for certain commands
within the civil3d user interface so I'm
just going to work down through each one
of those letter A is the match
properties command and you'll actually
find that command right here on the Home
tab of the ribbon you can see by the
tooltip there that that is the match
properties command import survey data is
actually can be found in two places that
I can think of it's right here on the
Home tab and it's also on the insert tab
the add labels command is on the
annotate tab you can see it right here
the inquiry tool is on the analyze tab
of the ribbon elevation editor can be
found on the modify tab the tool space
can of course be found on the Home tab
and finally the points from file command
which can be found on the insert tab so
hopefully in searching for the different
commands you are able to become more
accustomed to and more oriented with the
civil3d user interface for the second
part of this exercise we're going to
practice becoming more fluent with a
civil 3d interface by opening a drawing
called user interface 2 and using
certain parts of the the civil 3d user
interface so we'll start off with item a
which is the application menu and we
actually need to use that to open the
file so I'll open the application menu
click the open command and then go to
the chapter 1 folder where I find user
interface 2 DWG so right there right off
the bat we're using the application menu
but as you've learned earlier in the
chapter there's lots of different things
you can do
the application menu you can save
drawings you can publish in print you
can access drawing utilities lots and
lots of different things you can do from
that menu the next item we are asked to
use is the command line so we can use
the command line to launch lots of
different commands like the line command
and as I draw a line I can see that the
command line is also reporting
information back to me and even giving
me options and I can even click on those
options in this release it's a new
AutoCAD feature with the ability to
click on command line options rather
than having to type a certain letter
from the option so that's a nice
enhancement next we're asked to use the
ribbon so lots of different things we
can do with a ribbon for example I can
create a new alignment using the
alignment creation tools command so that
gives me access to one of many commands
through the ribbon next is prospector so
since I've created an alignment in the
drawing that's a civil 3d object I
should be able to browse that object in
prospector and as you can see there's
the brand-new alignment that I just
created called alignment for and it's
listed here in prospector there were
also other alignments in the drawing
main road a side road a etc which are
also listed there as design objects in
my drawing transparent commands we can
use one of those too to draw lines or
whatever construction we want using the
kinds of methods that civil engineers
and surveyors use so for example I'm
going to draw a line just using the line
command I'll launch it from the command
line like we did a minute ago I'll pick
a starting point and then I'm going to
go over here to my transparent commands
and use instead of angle distance or we
used bearing and distance last time I'll
use angle distance this time so it's
asking me for an ending point I'm going
to pick a point there and now it wants
me to express the angle and distance
from that point so I'm going to go 45
degrees
for a distance of 500 and there's my
line by angle and distance so there I've
successfully used a transparent command
and then finally we're asked to use the
inquiry tool in civil3d so I'm going to
switch over to the analyze tab click the
inquiry tool and I'm going to do an
alignment inquiry so I want to find the
station and offset at a point so I'll
choose my new alignment that I just made
a few minutes ago and I'll pick a point
and it's going to tell me the station
and offset of that point that's a simple
form of inquiry that we can do for an
alignment and as we learned earlier lots
of different types of inquiries that we
can do in our civil 3d drawing so that's
the essentials in beyond for chapter one